It's 45 feet long, it belongs to Crystal Gayle and it's missing

Country-music star Crystal Gayle may have the elements of a new song featuring a hard-luck fugitive who escapes custody to visit his dying mother then steals a tour bus to drive to a stock-car track.

Gayle's tour manager received a call from police about 6 p.m. Thursday and learned that her 45-foot-long tour bus had been spotted in Lakeland at USA International Speedway.

Racetrack officials told police that a well-dressed man identified himself as Daniel Pitts and a member of Joe Gibbs Racing team. A speedway employee became suspicious when the man said he was there to pick up race driver Tony Stewart, a member of Gibbs' team, because Stewart was not scheduled to appear at the track's SPEEDFEST 2007 event.

"His story just started having a lot of inconsistencies, so we asked him for some identification," speedway President Bill Martino told The Associated Press Friday. "He refused to give us identification and then took off in the bus."

Track officials gave police the license-tag number of the bus, which turned out to belong to Gayle, who is known for her long brown hair and her 1970s hit "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue." She's the younger sister of country legend Loretta Lynn.

The man is thought to be fugitive Christopher Daniel Gay, 32, who escaped from a prisoner-transport van Sunday during a restroom break in Hardeeville, S.C. He was being taken to Alabama to face charges of theft, officials said.

The next day, Gay was seen driving a stolen Wal-Mart truck in Coopertown, Tenn., near the home of his mother, who suffers from terminal cancer, police said. Gay drove the truck into a field 50 yards from her home and ran from police, according to the Metropolitan Police Department in Nashville, Tenn.

Sometime between Monday and Thursday, when he was spotted in Lakeland, he is suspected of breaking into a Nashville storage lot, where Gayle parks her Prevost tour bus between out-of-town gigs, and stealing it, police said.

"I am glad that no one is hurt," Gayle said Friday in a statement released from her home in Nashville. "I wish he would have went to see his mother who is very sick instead of joyriding in Florida."

The Grammy-winning singer is scheduled to be in Arizona for a performance Wednesday. But she may be flying instead of rolling down the interstate in her customized bus, which features front and rear lounges with a plasma TV, satellite dish and DVD player; a couch, kitchenette and enough room for 12 people to sleep.

"It's her home away from home," publicist Kirt Webster said Friday about the blue bus, which is valued at between $700,000 and $1 million.

Florida law-enforcement agencies are looking for the tour bus, which they said is no easy task because the star's name is not splashed across the side.

"It's not a very fancy bus" from the outside, said Jack Gillen, Lakeland police spokesman. "It looks like a mobile home that we see so many of this time of year."